Pregnant.
The word followed Emma around like a mantra as she went about her shift at the hospital the following morning, her preference for keeping herself busy allowing her to keep mostly to herself without earning too much suspicion. Of course she was not so foolish as to believe that Nathan would not seek her out at some point, if for no other reason than to question her sudden avoidance of their pre-rounds tradition of coffee and idle conversation. In truth, it had taken all the strength she possessed to haul herself out of bed that morning, and then to haul herself away from the cool tiles of her bathroom floor not long after. And now, despite the lingering churning in her stomach, Emma had at least managed to make it through a few hours of a shift without needing to retreat to the nearest bathroom, her hand straying towards the bottle of hand sanitizer mounted on the wall near the exit of the patient room she was preparing to leave, only to freeze mid-motion as a raspy voice reached her ears.
"You alright, sweetheart?"
"I-me?" Emma stammered, turning to face her patient-a frail, elderly woman of near ninety years, who had been brought in late the previous night for chest pain and difficulty breathing, who now wore an expression of what seemed to be genuine concern, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
"Well if that's the case, then so am I. Might as well discharge me now."
"I think we both know I can't do that, ma'am."
"Shelby."
"Pardon?"
"Shelby," The woman repeated, managing a smile, and gesturing to the chair situated beside her bed even in spite of Emma's skeptically raised brow, "Sit. Please."
"I can't-I have other patients-"
"You've been running around here at top speed since I first saw you. I'm pretty sure your other patients are just fine."
"You've been watching that long?" Emma mused, moving a bit hesitantly towards the proffered seat, and perching on its edge while simultaneously smoothing her hands against the fabric of her scrubs.
"I have. Not much else to do, really."
"You could try watching television."
"From what I've seen so far, things around here are far more interesting," Shelby remarked, pleased to see her words had provoked at least the beginnings of a faint smile in her companion, regardless of how harried she had appeared mere moments before, "You seem like you're one of the good ones."
"Thank you."
"How long have you been at it?"
"I'm-I'm rather new, actually," Emma confessed, surprised at how suddenly, she almost wanted to find a reason to stay here, in this woman's room, regardless of her initial desire to remain on her feet and almost overly-occupied for the entirety of that day. Something about Shelby's seemingly innocent line of questioning soothing her frayed nerves, even in spite of the lingering knowledge that she was still, in essence, a practical stranger.
Given everything else that Emma was actively trying to avoid, she supposed losing herself in a little bit of conversation with a patient was perhaps not that bad, after all.
"Do you like it? Your work, I mean."
"Yeah. Yeah, I think I really do."
"So it's not that, that has you so down in the mouth," Shelby surmised, smiling at the startled expression Emma wore, and shaking her head just a bit as she leaned over to reach for the styrofoam cup of water placed on her bedside table, "Is it a man?"
"What?"
"Is it a man that has you out of sorts? In my experience, dear, it's usually either a terrible boss, or a man that can get a woman stuck in her own head."
"Is that what-is that what you think? That I'm stuck in my own head?" Emma asked, a furrow marring her brow as she shifted in her chair, and allowed her gaze to track towards the monitors displaying Shelby's vitals, before her attention drifted back to Shelby's lined features as she replied.
"Oh sweetheart, it's what I know. I've seen that look you've got right now plenty of times, staring back at me in the mirror. I know what it means, and what it takes out of you."
Surprised, to say the least, Emma glanced down at where her hands still rested in her lap, her teeth chewing at her lower lip for a moment as she tried and failed to corral the sudden rush of emotion she felt into some semblance of order. She thought she had everything under control. That she could come to work, and return back home, with no one being the wiser as far as it pertained to the thoughts ricocheting around her mind. But to come into Shelby's room, and find that she was so easy to read despite her best efforts was both disconcerting, and simultaneously somewhat of a relief, all things considered…
Whether she had initially wanted to or not, the idea of having someone to talk to was suddenly something Emma thought she needed, even if that person hardly knew her at all.
"It's a man, isn't it?"
"I guess you could say that," Emma shrugged, a shaky breath escaping as the weight of everything she had been trying to avoid thinking of pressed against her, making it almost impossible to breathe, "My-my husband Paul-he um-he-"
"Take your time, dear. Though I will tell you right now, if he hurt you or cheated on you, I may be tempted to advise you to put your medical degree to good use in making him pay for it."
"No. No, it's not that," Emma assured, surprising herself with the laugh that broke free, despite the way she could feel the beginnings of tears as they clawed their way to the corners of her eyes, "It's not that at all. He-he died."
"Oh sweetheart-"
"I'm-I'm okay, I think. I just-"
"You miss him."
"All the time."
"Well I think that's fairly normal," Shelby murmured, fiddling with the styrofoam cup she still held between both hands, and regarding Emma for a moment longer before going on in hopes of relieving the younger woman of the sadness that seemed to weigh so heavily upon her mind, "When my Frank died, I felt like I had lost my sole reason for existing."
"When did he pass?"
"Shortly after our third wedding anniversary. We had just found out I was expecting, and he had gone out to pick up some ice cream to celebrate. A railroad crossing signal malfunctioned, and he never made it back home."
"My God, I-I'm so sorry."
"I was, too. For sending him out in the first place. For finding myself beholden to the rest of my family, because there was no way I could pick myself up off the ground and keep going on, even for the baby I had wanted with everything I had."
"What did you end up doing?" Emma inquired, hoping the question would not seem too forward, though judging by the sad smile that tugged at her companion's lips, her concern seemed to be largely unfounded. She hoped that her sudden curiosity would not be a dead giveaway to the reality of her own situation, no matter how ridiculous it seemed to keep her condition a secret when she had disclosed her struggle with Paul's absence readily enough. But before she could become too distracted with the idea of how she could backtrack before Shelby became suspicious, Emma found the desire rendered moot, her gaze flicking back to the older woman as she managed a shrug and spoke once again.
"Eventually, I came back to myself. I had the baby, and I loved him with everything I had."
"And now?"
"Now, my only regret is that Frank never got to know his grandchildren as I have. But he would have wanted me to move on. And I get the feeling Paul would want that for you, too."
"I'm-I'm not too sure that I can."
"Take a look at what you've already done today, sweetheart," Shelby suggested, extending a hand, and finding herself rather more than a little pleased when her younger companion readily placed her own inside her grasp, "You got yourself to work. You rushed around here taking care of your patients whether you felt up to it, or not. And now you're here talking to a little old lady when maybe you'd feel better if you actually took a break, instead."
"For the record, I think this may constitute taking care of one of my patients as well," Emma corrected, her grin matching Shelby's though it did falter far sooner than the older woman's did, "And speaking of, I should probably check on everyone else again, just to make sure they're alright."
"Don't think I don't see what you're doing," Shelby teased, aware of Emma's skeptical glance that came in response, and shaking her head in gentle amusement before elaborating further, "Throwing yourself back into work because I'm too nosy for my own good."
"No, Shelby, that-that definitely is not what this is. I just-"
"I know, dear. I understand. But the only way I'm letting you go back out there is if you promise me one thing in return."
"What's that?"
"Join me for lunch?"
Unable to stop the laugh that broke free in response to Shelby's apparent bargain, Emma managed a nod as soon as she reached the door frame, her hand lingering upon the metal for only a moment before she replied in kind.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world."
…
Squeezing the barrel of the gun he held on Billy in hopes that it would allow him to ignore the tremors that had started to wrack through every other part of his body, JD fought against the bile rising to the back of his throat, his eyes sliding towards Chris as he realized he had placed the barrel of his own weapon at the base of Marco's skull. He would have been a fool to pretend he wasn't grateful for that backup, meager as it may be, particularly as he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to wrangle the shreds of his cover back after everything had blown apart at the seams.
Of course, if Marco's expression was anything to go by, it seemed that, between the two of them, he and Chris may have pushed things past the point of no return already.
"I won't have to shoot your guy if he lets mine go, man."
"Yeah, I ain't gonna do that," JD retorted, swallowing past the panic that had risen to clog the back of his throat, and trying to ignore how he felt he had been backed up to the edge of some dark crevice, just waiting to be pushed over into oblivion, "Your guy was outta line, Marco."
"What'd he do?"
"I didn't do nothin' man," Elijah ground out, squirming against the chokehold JD had him in, albeit to no avail, "He's talkin' like you're-"
"Like I'm what?"
"A loose cannon."
"Funny, since I'm not the one holdin' a gun to a man's head," Marco quipped, lifting a brow as he regarded JD for a moment, before turning his attention towards Billy, instead, "And how the hell did you let this happen, huh?"
"I just walked in on it, boss."
"Yeah? Well you sure as shit haven't done a thing to fix it."
"What was I supposed to do?"
"What I always told you to do," Marco replied, managing a tight smile even in spite of the pressure of the gun against the back of his head, and giving Billy a look that he hoped would indicate what he intended to do next, without ever having said a word, "You have your guy's back, he'll be damn sure to have yours."
As he watched Billy's curt nod, Marco inhaled sharply through his nose, waiting for only a moment as the younger man dove beneath the aim of his adversary's gun to free Elijah from his apparent constraint. In the millisecond between that, and the sound of the newcomer's panicked shot that went whizzing over Billy's head, Marco twisted around the pressure of Vic's own weapon digging into his skull and dodged forward to knock him off his feet, the impact of their collision with the ground sending the gun Vic held skittering across the floor while Marco reached back to the waistband of his jeans, and snagged the knife he kept hidden beneath the hem of his shirt. And after that, he found he had little need to worry about Billy's ability to gain the upper hand, the satisfying sound of another shot echoing in his ears as he grappled with his own combatant for control over the knife until he felt it sink into flesh…
Until he twisted the blade, and became aware of the sensation of warm blood beginning to seep through a dark shirt in response.
…
"Hey-I've been looking all over for you," Nathan greeted, falling into step beside Emma as she moved towards a nearby empty cubicle, and deposited the charts she carried on top of the desk. She had met him with a smile, as always, but he had not been blind to how the gesture did not quite reach her eyes as it always had, before. He felt torn, truth be told, between questioning her about it, as opposed to allowing her to come clean in her own way, and in her own time. And so, he settled for as neutral a question as he could manage, given the circumstances, his expression cautiously optimistic as he watched her take a seat and type her username and password into the computer, before leaning against the edge of the desk and folding both arms against his chest, "You good?"
"Yeah. Definitely. You?"
"I'm fine. Just hoping I didn't miss the memo on something and give you a reason to be mad at me."
"What? Why-why would I be mad at you?" Emma questioned, abandoning her perusal of whatever she had been searching for on the computer in favor of looking Nathan in the eye, instead, "Trust me, I am definitely not mad at you."
"Good to hear."
"Did I-I'm sorry, did I really act that bad?"
"Not at all," Nathan assured, taking note of the obvious doubt in Emma's expression, and leaning over to place a hand upon her shoulder and give it a squeeze as extra reassurance behind his words, "You just weren't in for our usual coffee before rounds and I got worried."
"Yeah, I-I kind of got a late start."
"Partying hard last night?"
"God, no," Emma laughed, the sound seeming a bit flat, even to her own ears, though for his part, Nathan did not even attempt to question it, "Just-I just overslept."
"That's not like you."
"Who knows, maybe I'm starting a new trend."
"I wouldn't recommend it," Nathan jested, aware that once again, Emma's smile did not entirely reach her eyes, before she was looking back at the computer, while one hand lifted to her mouth so she could chew idly at a single thumbnail, "What's your patient load like?"
"Not bad. I'm actually supposed to have lunch with one of them in a little bit."
"Lunch? Really?"
"Yeah. Really," Emma confirmed, reaching for one of the charts at her side, and leafing through a few of the sheets inside before settling on the one she apparently desired, "What can I say, she won me over."
"She."
"What were you thinking it would be?"
"A handsome young gentleman, in the hospital for a sprained ankle, maybe."
"Seriously?"
"Hey, I can dream, right?" Nathan shrugged, relieved that Emma appeared to be only shaking her head in a show of exasperation and amusement, rather than taking offense at his not so subtle nudge at getting her back to the world, rather than allowing her to simply go home alone every single night after work, "You know I'm not trying to push you into anything you're not ready for-"
"I know."
"You're sure?"
"Of course," Emma assured, balancing the chart she held on her lap so she could reach for Nathan's hand and give it what she hoped would be a reassuring squeeze, "And I hope you know I'm not deliberately trying to be difficult about it. I just-"
"You just need time?"
"Something like that."
In the wake of of the flicker of something not all that far from panic that passed across Emma's features, Nathan found himself frowning almost immediately, the weight of her hand atop his own rather quickly falling away as she once again devoted her attention to her perusal of what he now saw was a journal article plastered on the computer screen. He wanted nothing more than to find some way of persuading her to talk. To tell him everything that troubled her so that he could help her out of it, rather than standing by, helpless, while she endured everything on her own. But before he could even begin to figure out exactly how he was to do that, Nathan found himself distracted by the buzz of his pager, and Emma's as well, his hand seizing around the device in his pocket just as Emma moved to do the same.
Trauma incoming. Officer down.
He didn't even have to look at Emma's face to know that she was already starting to relive what had happened to Paul, whether she knew this had nothing to do with him or not…
…
Hello darlings! And welcome to a brand new chapter in Emma's tale! Yes, I went there, and caused JD and Chris' undercover stint to go south far faster than I'd initially planned. But apparently my need to get Chris and Emma in the same room together kind of outweighed the need to take things slow, so hopefully no one minds too much? I promise, there are still a few more surprises and twists coming along the way!
As always, my heartfelt thanks go out to each and every one of you that has taken the time to read, follow, favorite and review thus far (and special thanks, as per usual, to Guest, and ChiTown4ever for always leaving such wonderful feedback, no matter how doubtful I may be about each chapter I post!) I truly do appreciate the support, and as always I cannot wait to hear what everyone thinks this time around!
Until next time, dear ones…
MOMM
Emma and Chris *will* meet next chapter! Eep!